Ah, it has been too long my friends. In the time between my last blog and now I have had a child and said child has gone from a little helpless infant to a rolly-polly 5 month old. And I must say, life is good.
Of course there have been some bumps in the road and every day I am faced with another ‘what now’ moment. Sometimes they are as simple (yet logistically complicated) as undressing and changing a poop covered child without making the situation worse. Other days it is my own inner struggle between reality and the society induced perfection I am constantly striving for. When did we all decide as women that the only real success is to have it all? Oh I could go on for hours on this topic, and will in later blogs. For now I just want to catch everyone up on life.
Thursday, Feb 25th 2010. I was home all day AGAIN just waiting to go into labor. I was fat, uncomfortable and just plain out annoyed. After forcing my poor husband to have sex with me I was ready to settle down for the night and bounce on the new exercise ball I had just bought. While I knew sex was supposed to induce labor, I had also heard bouncing on one of these balls would help. Plus they are supposed to feel good on the back and hips…..oh screw it, I can justify it any way I want but the truth is I was ready to try anything that would lead to not being pregnant anymore. I am not a patient person and 9 months is about all I could take.
And it worked (that or it was the sex, I’m not sure) but at around midnight I jumped out of bed with the most painful contraction ever and right then and there my water broke. I had always been worried that I wouldn’t know when my water broke. I was more worried about that than it making a huge embarrassing mess. Well it did neither, it did exactly what it was supposed to do, let me know it was time.
Some people might call this crazy, but we were not 100% ready to jump in the car and run to the hospital. I knew that is what I would want to do and I also knew that I should try to wait a little while at home. So to make myself stay put I hadn’t packed yet. Yes packing while having excruciating contractions every 7 minutes sucks, but it kept me busy while I waited to leave. I did not want to get to the hospital only to be sent home.
Once we got under way (about 2am) I was ready to meet my new best friend, mr. epidural.
We made it to the ER without incident and some very polite boys who were a little TOO wigged out on acid let us go first. After a few minutes I found myself suppressing the urge to kill the woman who was checking us in, but that too passed. We got into triage and discovered I was not as far along as I thought, but they would give me 20 minutes to see what happened before sending me home. The goal for the nurse was 3 c dilated, the goal for me was magic number 5. I was not willing to wait any longer for my friend. Thank you body for cooperating on that one! An hour later I found myself face first in some sweet nurses tits letting someone stick a huge needle into my spine, and I wasn’t the least bit scared. Anyone who knows me and needles knows that right there says something. And then I slept. Yup, slept. Besides getting rolled over like a beached whale every hour or so, I really slept on and off for the next 10 hrs or so……I wonder what my husband was doing?? Seriously, I should ask him.
Back to the story. Even with the labor inducing pictocin my labor just wasn’t progressing. I was stuck in 9.5 c land and just couldn’t seem to make it the rest of the way. Plus little baby Bonk was starting to get annoyed with the situation, its heart rate kept dropping low enough the scare the pants off everyone. But we weren’t going to give up. I really didn’t want to have a c section and luckily my doc was on the same page. A few more hours later we flipped the page and headed to the OR. Little Bonk wasn’t going to tolerate anymore of this shit and with a heart rate that just kept jumping up and down we decided the waiting was over. With in minutes I found myself out of my comfortable room and strapped on an operating table like Christ to the cross. Being strapped down like that was one of the most unnerving parts of the whole thing. I’m naked, my arms strapped out at my sides and the drs were running around preparing to cut me open. To make matters worse I was shaking to the point of convulsing. My teeth were chattering and I honestly thought ‘dear God, they are going to hand me that baby and I am going to drop it I am shaking so bad!’. It was awful. And sadly when my husband called out ‘its a boy!’ all I could think is ‘fine, can I go to sleep now?’ . Even after they wheeled me back into triage and showed me my little baby, all I cared about that he was healthy and I was no longer in labor. I just wanted to sleep. And I did, thanks again to the wonderful nurses at the hospital and the glorious place called ‘the nursery’ were all the professional baby-soothers live. I love those people.
Bill, Connor and I spent the next 5 days in our little safe world called the hospital.
All in all, labor was labor. It wasn’t 30 grueling hours of sweat-inducing pushing, but it wasn’t a walk in the park. 5 months later I can look back and say ‘it wasn’t that bad’…..yup….that is how fast parental amnesia works. It’s amazing.
